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The Torah, “Exodus,” (Mishpatim), 22:24: If you lend money to one of my people, the poor of your people, it should not be like a business deal for him, don’t impose usury upon him.

A person doesn’t need to profit at the expense of others. Everything must be measured and weighed precisely according to the amount that each one is prepared to give to someone and to take from him, for ultimately all need absolutely to reach mutual connection and wholeness.

Therefore, all the laws that speak about relationships between people are based on the connection to one, complete spiritual matter, which means, a mutual harmonious whole. Suppose that you are working for me as a gardener and I work for you as a carpenter, there must be absolutely equal compensation. And it was said precisely, “Go and make a living from each other,” that is mutual. Therefore, all of us were created with different characteristics.

Thus, I cannot profit from you and you cannot profit from me. Rather, we can only exchange our production. From this are derived all the rest of the main laws that we will get in the future, we and all humanity. These are laws of absolute equality, equal allocation and wages, an equal standard of living where there are no differences between people—rich or poor, lucky or unlucky, and so forth.

Question: However, the sentence, “If you lend money to one of my people,” is liable to arouse a negative attitude about Jews.

Answer: This is speaking about spiritual concepts, about spiritual laws.

The Torah doesn’t talk about relationships among people in our world, rather only about the manner in which people yearn for equivalence of form with the Creator through the link between them, creating a general mutual characteristic similar to the characteristic of bestowal of the Creator and discovering Him within this internal characteristic. Therefore, it says, “my people,” meaning every person who yearns for this goal without any connection to his origin.[114866]From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 5/27/13